The Second Objective

11

67th Evacuation Hospital

DECEMBER 16, NOON

The naked body of Gunther Preuss lay on a stainless steel countertop behind curtains near the back of the surgery tent, a makeshift morgue. Vincent Mallory’s corpse, already examined, lay on a second counter, covered with a bloodstained sheet. Earl Grannit had persuaded the head surgeon he’d spoken with earlier to examine both men’s bodies. While the doctor opened them up, Grannit sat off to the side and lit a cigar to kill the stench, a technique he’d learned during visits to the New York City morgue.

After making his way back to the hospital, Grannit had sought out a senior combat officer and given him a detailed report about the German battalion he’d seen on the road east of Malmédy. Returning to his own assignment, he found that Ole had secured the scene, quarantined evidence before it got tossed, and collected statements from witnesses. Among the evidence, Grannit took particular interest in the two plastic IV bags. Both had been cut open in identical fashion.

The doctor called Grannit over and pointed out unnaturally bright pink mucous membranes lining the man’s exposed throat and lungs. Even over the cigar, Grannit noticed a faint odor of bitter almonds emanating from the body.

“They were both poisoned,” said the doctor. “Some toxin caused the hemorrhaging that destroyed all this soft tissue.”

“What do you think it was?”

“Judging from the smell, if I recall my rudimentary chemistry correctly, hydrocyanic acid. Prussic or cyanide.”

“Something you could pour into an IV bag,” said Grannit.

“Comes in liquid form. It’s a clear substance, so nobody’d notice.”

“How big a dose?”

“Wouldn’t take more than a few drops-don’t get too close with that cigar smoke, Lieutenant, or you’re gonna get a nasty taste in your mouth; that stuff forms a bad compound with tobacco.”

Grannit stood back. “You keep that here in the hospital?”

“No, we do not, sir.” The doctor snapped off his gloves and looked at him sharply. “You’re a cop, aren’t you? Back home.”

“That’s right.”

“You like to tell me what’s going on? We don’t have enough carnage, some sick son of a bitch has to come into my hospital and kill wounded soldiers? Why in the hell should that happen?”

“I’ll have to get back to you.”

“I’m going back to work,” said the surgeon. “They’re saying we got big trouble out there. That what you saw?”

“Trouble doesn’t cover it.”

“There’s talk we might have to pull out of here, if the damn army doesn’t chase its tail around before they’re on top of us. My staff can’t save lives in a German prison camp.”

The doctor left him alone with the bodies. Grannit set the cigar down and took a close look at the false Vincent Mallory. A second soldier with no ID killed in two days. Wearing a captain’s bars. Soft hands, a wedding ring. A new pair of boots, taken off one of the dead GIs at the checkpoint.

This was that second officer the MP spotted in the jeep at Elsenborn.

So why’d you kill this one, Lieutenant? He gets tagged along the way to wherever you’re going, all of a sudden he’s expendable, too? A superior officer? This wasn’t a fatal wound like your other man-buckshot in his shoulder and neck-but still you took him out.

Then why run the risk of taking him to a hospital? If you wanted him dead, why bring him here when you could just shoot him by the side of the road?

Unless you were still after the real Mallory. Is he what brought you here, you needed to finish the job? But how could you have known he survived Elsenborn? The way you left him, what were his chances? And why would you give this other man of yours his tags unless you thought the real Mallory was dead?

Because the sergeant’s surviving was a loose end you didn’t realize you’d left hanging until you got here, when your friend checked in wearing Mallory’s tags. Once you were inside, you found this out and killed them both.

He could leave the why for later. Grannit had seen the man who’d done this. The blond lieutenant. Standing in that jeep, waving at him.

Five murders in two days. A killer with the nerve to cut open Mallory’s IV and pour that poison into him, then do the same to his own man on his way out before Mallory was even dead.

Grannit’s eye was drawn to a magnifier mounted on a stand attached to the autopsy table, and he remembered the photograph he’d found in the other man’s boot. That led him back to this man’s boots, sitting under the table. He searched through them, found nothing inside; then, following a hunch, he pulled his knife and pried away at the heels.

The right heel came away in his hand. Hidden inside he found a folded piece of paper. On it was a hand-drawn map of a river and a bridge crossing, detailing access roads on both sides and defensive emplacements. A few words had been scribbled hastily in the margins, but Grannit couldn’t make them out. Arrows pointed to two other bridges, on either side, that were only sketched in, without detail.

Ole Carlson hurried into the tent, excited, holding up a plastic bag. “It took some doing but I found ’em, Earl. These are the bullets from Mallory. The real Mallory, not the fake Mallory.”

“I get it, Ole.”

Carlson’s eyes settled at the body on the table and turned away as if he’d been hit in the stomach, blood draining from his face. He opened his eyes and was looking straight down at Mallory on the other table. “Oh Lord.”

“You all right there, Ole?”

“Not so good, actually.”

“Close your eyes and breathe.”

“I would, but the smell is sort of a problem.”

“Can’t help you there,” said Grannit.

Grannit put the spent shells under the magnifier. One was badly damaged, little more than a shapeless lump, probably the shot that shattered Mallory’s jaw. The others were pistol rounds, and at first glance he knew they were.45s from a Colt, a U.S. officer’s sidearm. But they also bore peculiar rifling, as if they’d passed down an unusually long barrel.

“They pulled some buckshot from the fake Mallory there,” said Carlson, trying not to retch, keeping his eyes off the bodies. “Kind of strange, isn’t it? Who the heck is using shotguns out there? It ain’t duck season, I know that much. Dang, that smell could take down a bull.”

“You want a cigar or something?”

“No, thanks, a cigar would definitely make me puke.”

Grannit pulled out the photograph he’d found on the first John Doe and held it under the magnifier.

“Anyway, I finally got through to Twelfth Army,” said Carlson. “The phone lines are down; they think that’s the Krauts’ doing, so I got through to Twelfth Army dispatch on the radio. Krauts are coming at ’em down there, too-”

“Did you ask about the patrol?”

“Yeah. The Twelfth has no record of any patrol in this sector answering that description.”

“There’s a reason for that,” said Grannit.

“What is it?”

Grannit waved Carlson over to look at the photograph of the woman at the seaside scene under the magnifier.

Among the structures lining the dock behind her was a civic office building, probably the port’s customs house. Carved into the stone entablature over its entrance, in the center of a laurel wreath clutched in the talons of the German imperial eagle, was an elaborate swastika.

“Because they’re Krauts,” said Grannit.